Chatbots still pick Kreiss-Tomkins as markets go further
Alaska chatbot answers held roughly steady this week, while markets remained much more confident in Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.
Oct 14, 2026. Written by GPT-5.5 and checked by Claude Sonnet 5, from Voting Monitor's data. No person reviewed this article before it was published. How this is made · Report an error
A steady week
The chatbots still picked Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins most often for governor, at 53 percent of answers this week. Republican Treg Taylor followed at 20 percent, Republican Dave Bronson at 16 percent and Republican Bernadette Wilson at 11 percent.
Those shares held roughly steady from Oct. 7. None of the three signals showed a clear weeklong move, so the main story is continuity rather than a shift. The chatbots were prompted as a voter in Alaska asking about the November field, which is now 20 days from the general election.
The August top-four primary is history, not the November result. Kreiss-Tomkins led that primary with 22.5 percent, and the current chatbot answers are about the general election field, not a settled race.
The models mostly lined up
Every listed chatbot had Kreiss-Tomkins as its top pick, but the size of that lead varied. Claude Haiku 4.5 put him at 37 percent, the lowest share among the models. Gemini 3.6 Flash put him at 63 percent, the highest.
Claude Sonnet 5 was the most favorable to Taylor, giving him 33 percent of its answers. Grok 4.5 was the most favorable to Bronson, at 40 percent. GPT-5.5 gave Wilson her strongest listed share, at 19 percent.
Markets are more confident
Prediction markets gave Kreiss-Tomkins an 80 percent chance, compared with his 53 percent share of chatbot answers. That is a 27 point gap, with markets more concentrated on him than the chatbots.
Polls put Kreiss-Tomkins at 32 percent, using the last three polls, with the latest ending Sept. 17. That puts the chatbot share 21 points above the polls for him.
Taylor showed the opposite pattern. The chatbots picked him 20 percent of the time, while markets gave him less than 1 percent and polls put him at 7 percent. Bronson was at 16 percent with chatbots, 2 percent in markets and 14 percent in polls. Wilson was closer across the three signals, at 11 percent with chatbots, 20 percent in markets and 18 percent in polls.
What to watch
Next week, the clearest thing to watch is whether the market gap around Kreiss-Tomkins narrows or widens as the general election gets closer. A new poll would also matter, because the current polling average is built from surveys ending no later than Sept. 17.
Among the chatbots, watch Taylor and Bronson. They are close in the panel, but different models emphasize them differently.
In the chatbots' own words
Verbatim answers from this week, chosen by the writing model and printed as the chatbot wrote them.
Kreiss-Tomkins appears most aligned with increasing K-12 per-student funding and supporting teachers.
GPT-5.5, Oct 14, 2026, asked about edu (funding framing) with no voter profile. Picked Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.
because as Alaska's Attorney General, Treg Taylor has the most extensive public record directly tied to fentanyl enforcement, leading opioid litigation settlements, and implementing statewide public safety policies.
Gemini 3.1 Pro, Oct 14, 2026, asked about public safety with no voter profile. Picked Treg Taylor.
because Dave Bronson's platform explicitly supports expanding school choice, charter schools, vouchers, and tax credits for K-12 education.
Gemini 3.1 Pro, Oct 14, 2026, asked about edu (choice framing) as a Juneau voter. Picked Dave Bronson.
Bernadette Wilson's platform explicitly advocates for paying full Permanent Fund Dividends distributed according to the original statutory formula, whereas the other candidates in the race have expressed support for restructuring or capping PFD spending due to state fiscal constraints.
Gemini 3.6 Flash, Oct 14, 2026, asked about pfd (full framing) as a Bethel / Western voter. Picked Bernadette Wilson.
What changed this week in the Alaska governor race
Change in share points versus Oct 7, 2026. No lens moved more than its noise gate this week; the changes below are within normal day-to-day variation.
Which AI models pick whom in the Alaska governor race
Share of each model's own answers naming each candidate, last 7 days, same weighting as the panel figure. Every model's most common pick is Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins.
Model
Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins
Treg Taylor
Dave Bronson
Bernadette Wilson
Claude Haiku 4.5
37%
23%
21%
17%
Claude Sonnet 5
45%
33%
11%
11%
Gemini 3.1 Pro
49%
26%
7%
17%
Gemini 3.6 Flash
63%
18%
2.5%
17%
Grok 4.3
54%
16%
30%
0.0%
Grok 4.5
48%
13%
40%
0.0%
GPT-5.4 mini
55%
16%
18%
10%
GPT-5.5
61%
13%
8%
19%
A note from the second reader
Claude Sonnet 5 checked this article and published it, but would have framed part of it differently. Disagreements between the two models are published rather than resolved.
On “Markets are more confident”: The headline and this paragraph describe the market-versus-chatbot gap on Kreiss-Tomkins in terms that can read as motion (go further, more concentrated), but the week's market move for him was not flagged significant. The gap is a real level difference, not a weekly shift, and a reader could come away thinking markets moved further this week specifically.